How to Write your Memoirs:

A Discussion of Journaling Tools and Features

Our easy framework and powerful tools enable you to record your memories and life experiences, add photos and scrapbook items, and share your life and family story using our intuitive, easy-to-use online family tree and personal journaling website.

Much like a book, your site has a table of contents with individual chapters that you can customize to fit your personal life story. As you write, your table of contents grows dynamically, showing only those chapters and sub-chapters which contain your writings.

Click here to see an example

As you write your memoirs you will find that long forgotten people, places and events suddenly become clear again. You will smile, you might weep. It will be exhilarating as memories once again become fresh, and as the story of your life unfolds onto paper and screen.

To get started, try some of these tools...

Bio Wizard
The bio wizard contains over 500 topics, organized by interest (e.g. "Family", "School", "Children", etc). Pick an area you feel like writing about, and the Bio Wizard will suggest a topic to help you get started.

Renameable Chapters
There are 15 primary chapters for you to use in organizing your stories: Bio Summary, My Blog, Family, Growing Up, Work, Romance, Life & Friends, Hobbies, Health, Education, Travel & Adventures, Culinary, Entertainment, Holidays, and Advice. Each of these can be renamed to anything you want (subject to character limitations), in any language.

Unlimited Sub-Chapters
You can create as many sub-chapters as you want within each chapter. For instance, in the Family chapter, you might have subchapters for your mom, dad, brother, sister, children, etc. And in the Culinary chapter, you might have subchapters for recipes, restaurants, awards, etc. Using subchapters provides a deep and easy way to organize your biography.

Password Protection
Global setting — you can password protect your entire biography so it will only be viewable to those with whom you connect or give your password to.

Journal entry setting — whether you password protect your biography globally or not, there may be some things you want to write for posterity but do not yet want anyone to see. You have the ability to set a special password so that when you write a new story you can designate it as private.

Reference Dates
Each journal entry has optional reference dates which you can use to designate when the story occurred in your life. When reading your biography, you can use reference dates to sort your stories into chronological order.

Photos and Scrapbook Items
Enhance your biography by adding photos, videos and even scrapbook mementos to accompany your stories. Add photos (in .jpg or .gif format) and video (in .mov, .qt, .mpeg, or .wmv format) to any entry, in any chapter. Simply write your story, click "Publish", and then click on the "Add Photo" link. You can even designate an image to appear on the cover of the chapter!

Blogging
The term "blogging" comes from Blog, or Weblog. The first chapter in your site is titled "My Blog" and is the perfect place to write your unstructured thoughts and musings on world events, local happenings, poetry, or anything else. This is your special place to write things which may not be directly applicable to your biography, but will still get your personal views across.

Sharing Your Biography
A variety of tools help you manage your biography and stay in touch with family and friends. Our "Family & Friends Email" utility automatically emails weekly updates to everyone in your family tree and connections list, showing the new journal entries and scrapbook items you've added to your Life Book. And a related tool allows you to send group emails as often as you wish, so you can keep everyone informed of special events or announcements.

Making Connections & Sending Invitations
You can use the "Invitations" tool to send announcements to your family and friends, so they can come see your family tree and read your journals. And if you want to connect your profile to a family member or a friend, simply click the "Connect to this Person" link when you are looking at their memoir. They'll get an email telling them you want to connect.

Comments from Friends and Family
When people are reading your biography they can comment on any story, or on any journal entry. You will receive an email letting you know you have new comments waiting for you, and you can read them by clicking on "Comments" in your "Tools" section. If you approve the comment, it will be posted to the specific journal entry, and if you don't approve it then it will be deleted.

Books for a Memoir You can Hold
The free book utility lets you download a Microsoft Word (.doc) version of your journals, right to your own computer. You can then make any formatting changes or edits you want and use your printer at home to produce a printed copy of your Life Book. And if you would like to publish your Life Book -- for yourself, as a gift for a family member, or as a memorial for a loved one who has passed away -- we can help you create the book you've always wanted.

You can have your Life Book edited, published, and delivered right to your door by taking advantage of our book editing and publishing services. Our team of editors and pre-press professionals will help make sure that your LIfe Book is the best it can be. And the Web Biographies Press will publish your memoir or scrapbook in an elegant hardcover full color edition. There is no minimum order either. You can have a hundred published to sell or give away as gifts, or publish just one copy for your family bookshelf.

Dynamic Table of Contents
A good table of contents for your book of memoirs will show everything you have, and nothing you don't. Well, with the ability to rename chapters, and the ability to create an infinite number of sub-chapters, you can see how challenging this is for our programmers. But we did it. Your table of contents will show only the chapters you have written in, and will show all sub-chapters you have created. All in an easy to read standard format table of contents for your book.

Family Tree
Even if you are not a professional genealogist, you will get a thrill when you start building your family tree. Just add your parents, your children, perhaps even your grandchildren, and it will give you something everyone will be proud of. And as your children have children of their own, your tree will grow, so you are automatically included for them to see and know.

GEDCOM
If you are a seasoned genealogy advocate, then we have good news — we will soon be GEDCOM compliant so you can upload your file to your family tree and get an instant visual on all the hard research you've done. Plus, of course, each ancestor will now have their own biography site where you can add the details and images from each of their lives, and thereby enrich your family legacy for everyone to enjoy.

Unique, Personal URL
Your personal website URL, which you can place on other personal or business sites, will be http://bio.webbiographies.com/YOU. Can you get a permanent URL such as you.com from someone like Network Solutions or GoDaddy? Sorry, that's not possible because those registrars charge annual fees; so one day when you're gone, they will cancel your domain name and give it to someone else. This takes your biography offline... and we don't want that to happen. We give you a unique domain name at Web Biographies in order to protect you for the future.

Remember, a few steps ultimately become miles...

Don't rush things, there is no time limit on how fast you have to write your memoirs. You can write as often as you want — several times a day or once a week, whatever works for your schedule. The important thing is to just start writing, then add more as you have time. Write about your past stories, and you'll start building a true living history of events as they happen in your life.

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